Demise of Pol Pot’s brother-in-law dismays victims of regime whose policies led to death of 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution

Ieng Sary, who co-founded the communist Khmer Rouge regime responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s and decades later became one of its few leaders to be put on trial, has died at the age of 87.

The brother-in-law of the late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, Sary died before any verdict was reached in the trial, which began in late 2011 with four defendants and now has only two.

His death dashed hopes among survivors and prosecutors that he would be punished for his alleged crimes against humanity during the darkest chapter in his country’s history.

Chea Leang, a co-prosecutor for the joint Cambodian-international tribunal where Sary had been on trial, told the press that he died of “irreversible cardiac failure”.

Sary had suffered from high blood pressure and heart problems and was admitted to a Phnom Penh hospital on March 4 with weakness and severe fatigue.

Sary was being tried along with two other former Khmer Rouge leaders, both in their 80s, and there are fears that they, too, could also die before justice is served.

Sary’s wife, former Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith, had also been charged but was ruled unfit to stand trial last year because she suffered from a degenerative mental illness, probably Alzheimer’s disease.

“We are disappointed that we could not complete the proceeding against Ieng Sary,” Lars Olsen, a spokesman for the tribunal said, adding that the case against his colleagues, Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge’s chief ideologist, and Khieu Samphan, an ex-head of state, will continue and will not be affected.

Sary founded the Khmer Rouge with leader Pol Pot. The Communist regime, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, claimed it was building a pure socialist society by evicting people from cities to work in labour camps in the countryside. Its radical policies led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution.

Sary was Foreign Minister in the regime and, as its top diplomat, became a much more recognisable figure internationally than his secretive colleagues.

The Khmer Rouge came to power through a civil war which toppled a US-backed regime. Sary then helped persuade hundreds of Cambodian intellectuals to return home from overseas, often to their deaths.

The returnees were arrested and put in ‘reeducation camps’, and most were later executed, said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, an independent group gathering evidence of the Khmer Rouge crimes for the tribunal.

As a member of the Khmer Rouge’s central and standing committee, Sary “repeatedly and publicly encouraged, and also facilitated, arrests and executions within his Foreign Ministry and throughout Cambodia”, said Steve Heder in his co-authored book Seven Candidates For Prosecution: Accountability For the Crimes of the Khmer Rouge. Heder is a Cambodia scholar who later worked with the UN-backed tribunal.

Known by his revolutionary alias as ‘Comrade Van’, Sary was a recipient of many internal Khmer Rouge documents detailing torture and mass execution of suspected internal enemies, according to the Documentation Centre of Cambodia.

“We are continuing to wipe out remaining (internal enemies) gradually, no matter if they are opposed to our revolution overtly or covertly,” read a cable sent to Ieng Sary in 1978. It was reprinted in an issue of the centre’s magazine in 2000, apparently proving he had full knowledge of bloody purges.

“It’s clear that he was one of the leaders that was a recipient of information all the way down to the village level,” Youk Chhang said.

In 1996, years after the overthrown Khmer Rouge retreated to the jungle, Sary became the first member of its inner circle to defect, taking thousands of foot soldiers with him and hastening the movement’s final disintegration.

The move secured him a limited amnesty, temporary credibility as a peacemaker and years of comfortable living in Cambodia, but that vanished as the UN-backed tribunal built its case against him.

Sary was arrested in 2007, and the trial against him started in late 2011. He faced charges that included crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

He denied any hand in the atrocities. At a press conference following his defection, he said Pol Pot “was the sole and supreme architect of the party’s line, strategy and tactics”.

“Do I have remorse? No,” he said in 1996. “I have no regrets because this was not my responsibility.”

Sary declined to participate in his trial, demanding that the tribunal consider the pardon he received from Cambodia’s king when he defected in 1996. (AP)

The rise and fall of ‘Comrade Van’

• Ieng Sary was born Kim Trang on October 24, 1925, in southern Vietnam.

• In the early 1950s, he was among many Cambodian students who received government scholarships to study in France, where he also took part in a Marxist circle.

• After returning to Cambodia in 1957, he taught history at an elite high school in the capital, Phnom Penh, while engaging in clandestine communist activities.

• Sary, his wife Ieng Thirith, Pol Pot and Pol Pot’s wife, Khieu Ponnary (Thirith’s sister), eventually formed the core of the Khmer Rouge movement.

• Pol Pot was known as Brother No. 1, Nuon Chea as Brother No. 2 and Ieng Sary was Brother No. 3.

• In August 1979, eight months after the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge by a Vietnam-led resistance, Sary was sentenced in his absence to death by the court of a Hanoi-installed Government which was made up of former Khmer Rouge defectors like Hun Sen, the current Prime Minister. The show trial also condemned Pol Pot.

• Since taking charge of the Khmer Rouge guerilla movement’s finances, Sary was believed to have used his position to amass personal wealth.

• On August 8, 1996, a Khmer Rouge rebel radio broadcast announced a death sentence against him for embezzling millions of dollars which reportedly came from the group’s logging and gem business along the border with Thailand.

• He struck a peace deal with Hun Sen and days later led a mutiny of thousands of Khmer Rouge fighters to join the Government, which was a prelude to the movement’s total collapse in 1999.

• As a reward, Hun Sen – who has ruled Cambodia for the last two decades – secured a royal amnesty for Sary from then-king Norodom Sihanouk, who himself had been a virtual prisoner of the Khmer Rouge. The Government also awarded Sary a diplomatic passport for travel.

• Between his defection in 1996 and arrest in 2007, Sary lived a comfortable life, dividing time between his opulent villa in Phnom Penh and his home in Pailin, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in northwestern Cambodia.

• His trial started in late 2011.